What is it to be young? “It is dreaming, projecting yourself into the future, wishing… but all the crises have hit us in the face and we have been run over, floating. My generation, and those that will come, we are pessimists. They have denied us the future. Everything you lean on to dream falls apart, it slips out of our hands. We live in the dictatorship of the no future“. Speaks Jun Komura, a 20-year-old student of Catalan philology and a resident of Barcelona. “He is right. We don’t want to look to the future because it scares us,” he adds. Alba Segarra, 26-year-old environmentalist. “Being young is having energy, dreaming… But I only dream of surviving,” he says Sukaina Fares, 29-year-old migrant mother. “We are dreamers but it turns out fatally”, summarizes Nuria Comaa 24-year-old psychologist with a physical disability in her leg that makes it difficult for her to walk.
They also recognize that their generation is immersed in an individualist and consumerist wave that frustrates social change.
Komura is 20 years old. He is Catalan, the son of a Japanese father and a Catalan mother. He studies Catalan philology although he hates university and has been working in a bookstore since he was 16. He speaks with absorbing clarity. “Society has taught us that Being an adult means having things: a partner, a house, children… and youth is that impasse until you get it. But all these goals have become meaningless or they cannot be carried out”, she explains. A phrase and a feeling, which the other three interviewed girls understand and assume perfectly. How do they live it? What do they feel? What do they complain about? This is the voice of young people in THE NEWSPAPER.
Emancipation: Mission Impossible
His big concern is a fish that bites its tail and that no one has resolved yet. “We have shitty salaries and the rents are impossible“, sums up Fares. Much has been said, and at length, about this problem that also conditions the lives of these four young people. “I am lucky, because they have always made me a contract, although temporary and charging very littleless than the minimum wage,” says Komura. Now he wants to become independent from his parents’ house. “Getting a room in Barcelona for less than 300 euros a month is an impossible mission,” he assumes.
“The older generations have grown up in the culture of effort… and this no longer works for us: we want to live”
Segarra has a degree and a master. “We are the best-prepared generation with fewer opportunities“, explains the girl. “We are overexploited. Wages do not pay for the work you do, they take advantage of you… I have been in four companies and I’m still with an internship contract“. He continues to live at his father’s house, in Corbera de Llobregat. “If I want to have a social life, I can’t afford to pay for a room,” he says.
“The rent is unpayable, and if you’re an immigrant, forget it,” Fares complains. “They don’t want to rent anything to those who see your last names,” continues the girl of Moroccan origin. “I have had to look for a lot of life. I have been in the most absolute precariousness: working as a waitress, without a contract, working 11 hours a day for 50 euros. Now I am autonomous and I am still just as bitchy. You can’t save, you just have to pay… I drown and I’m juggling,” he explains. “I studied psychology and did a master’s degree. Then, you only find precariousness. With luck you earn 1,000 euros and you don’t get paid for overtime… horrible,” she says, speaking of her last job. “The flats are tremendous, but there are also no adapted flats for people with disabilities,” she explains. “I was lucky and became independent because a friend rented me his apartment. It’s like his would have hit the jackpot.”
“Youth poverty is being romanticized,” adds Komura. “That they tell you that sleeping in a container is fashionable, that we use applications of food that is going to be thrown away… it is make business of misery“, Fares insists. “And then you go out to eat, or you go on vacation and you feel guilty,” continues Coma. “Of course I buy second-hand clothes, I go by bike… but it’s not because I’m an ecologist, it’s why I can’t choose anything else, I can’t afford itKomura adds.
a horizon of death
The economic one is the great crisis that devastates the youth since the outbreak of the financial crack. But it is not the only one. “A horizon of death pursues you. The world is in a phase of extinction,” describes Komura. It is the climate crisis. “It makes me suffer but if I can’t make it to the end of the month… I can’t think about the future”Fares adds. “Many times I think about it, maybe we have to leave Barcelona because the sea level rises! And people with disabilities are going to suffer more when the temperature rises, the pathologies worsen,” adds Coma. Segarra is vegan and is very aware of climate change. “Me It makes me eco-anxious to see that we know how to solve it but we don’t care. People are very individualistic,” he explains.
On this they all agree. “He has won us the neoliberalism and consumerism. And it is something that I envy about the generation of our parents and grandparents: they go out into the streets, protest and fight,” Fares complains. “We have believed that You put four things on social networks and you already change the world“, agrees Coma. “I believe that our generation will never see a 15M. Awe hold out to the max, then we burn it all down… but we don’t build anything. Social protest has been ridiculed,” says Komura.
These young people participate in organizations and social movements. But they feel like a minority. “Most people my age areHe just wants to earn money, party and forget about everything“explains the boy.
“We use and throw away clothes, mobile phones… we also do it with relationships”
love in crisis
They say unlucky in gambling, lucky in love. Or not. “Our grandparents grew up in the generation of love forever, of absolute dedication and dedication to the other. Our parents bought it but half separated. Now we consume bodies or use the concepts of care, affective responsibility… but in these relationships there is no loveKomura argues.
“We have very superficial relationships… and then people cling to it. There are strong attachment and dependency, and I think it’s because we don’t have anything else to hold on to,” says Segarra, who recently broke off a 10-year relationship. Coma is still with her 16-year-old boyfriend. “And I’m the ‘weird guy’. My friends are all on Tinder. They tell me that I have the mentality of a 60-year-old woman.” “We use and throw away clothes, mobile phones… we also do it with relationships,” Fares clinches.
Fares was a very young mother. She is now separated. “It’s never a good time. And everything ends up falling back on you even if you don’t want to. You eat machismo with potatoes,” she explains. Neither Segarra nor Coma have ever considered motherhood. “Seems like a heroic actsays the second.
All three admit to being victims of machismo. “Everyone has been touched or they have done something they didn’t want. And the aggressors are everywhere. A client invited me to eat because he wanted to ‘try’ with an Arab… disgusting,” says Fares.
The end of the culture of effort
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They understand that the older generations do not understand them. “They associate us with victimhood, complainers… but I think the abysmal difference is that they they have grown up in the culture of effort… and this is no longer useful to us: we want to live“, says Komura. But he adds that his generation is opening many doors. For example, new gender identities, such as non-binarism. Or the destigmatization of mental health. “We are crushed, you can’t afford the psychologist but we talk of it. We know what we want,” says Fares.
“Older people don’t understand us, because their conditions and ours are different. We have found a very different world from the one our parents told us we would find. And it’s up to us find new solutions“Says Segarra. Coma is very clear about it. “I don’t think they have left us a world of shit on purpose, they also feel bad that we are like this. But we have to understand that the privileges are over, you have to listen and think about others“. “If we only see crises in the world in which we live… perhaps it is necessary to reconsider another world. I don’t want to live ‘burned'”, sums up Komura.